There are a lot of new people here since my last post. Hello! This is a blog where I write about my preoccupations, and if you’re here that likely means you appreciated a turn of phrase or way that I approached a topic, and/or you are a friend or acquaintance. Whatever the reason, however the path, I am glad you’re here.
Love as a politics has been on my mind a lot the last few years. It’s what is underneath a lot of things that people say they care about, but seem unwilling to name as love. In what is increasingly an unpopular opinion, I will say that love is the answer to everything. It’s not “all you need,” but understanding the human need for love makes a lot of things crystal clear, a vision that once held in the mind becomes both unbearable to live with and impossible to forget. The need for love means the need to be seen, heard, and understood. To receive consideration. To be nurtured. To receive respect, in the most basic and fundamental sense.
How do people come into possession of the belief that everyone deserves a life of dignity and that we humans have the capacity to imagine that life, as well as the resources to make it a reality? I have wondered about this for myself. I suppose the answer is experience; when you have been in some way at risk, when that is part of your inheritance, when you’ve seen your people work very hard just to get by, you see the world in a particular way. And that worldview becomes something quite different if you grow up absorbing the idea that those who don’t have enough simply haven’t worked hard enough. Or maybe you also don’t have enough, not even close, but you live with a fear of someone else taking it all away, a fear that there isn’t enough to go around, because that’s been your experience. It becomes easier to hate an unknown other than to face the fact that your own precarious reality is the result of a deep lack of love, broadly speaking, for the fate of human life. For life, in general.
Let me pause and say that I while I have studied a lot of thinkers who have variously grappled with these questions, I am trying to share these thoughts in simple, everyday language, without references and citations. If pressed, I’d say that, generally speaking, German Jewish thought, Black feminists, and psychoanalysis have made the biggest impact on how I think about these matters. I am talking about love as a social relation, not in the private sense.
If we understand that another person’s needs are as important as our own, love is already present, even if we don’t want to name it or see it as such. Have you ever had the experience of making a meal with friends or family? Or even just sharing a meal with friends or family? Let’s say spaghetti is being served. Let’s assume everyone being served is an adult. You dish it out in more or less even portions, right? You’ve probably even taken a bit from one bowl that had too much, to fill another one that had less. Because everyone should get the same amount, right? And if someone needs more, and there is more to be had, they can have it, because not everyone else will want or need more. A long held question full of longing for me: why can’t we figure this out on a broader scale? I know the answers, from history and cultural theory, but I guess what I find unacceptable and difficult to bear is that perhaps many people just don’t want to? I recently finished reading a stunning new novel called The New Earth by Jess Row. One of the characters, Naomi, is a climate scientist who writes a bestselling book called The Shiva Hypothesis, in which she argues that humans have always willfully destroyed the planet. Her premise gets at the same ugly truth I find so hard to accept—that to love means to share and many just don’t want to.
I’m nothing if not hopeful, though, and I do wonder where that comes from. I think that love as a politics of collectivity can be taught, but it probably needs to be untethered from any system of belief other than love itself. I say that because the very idea of a person’s adherence to certain beliefs seems to disqualify them from love even by those who profess to care for all, and it also disqualifies anything they might say about love.
Without love for everyone, we cannot even claim to imagine a better world. I can’t think of a failure worse than the death of imagination. Communism (I was really trying to avoid saying this, but who cares, this is my space, though I’m willing to give up any name or word for the project of love) includes even the people with whom you disagree the most, whose politics you think are unconscionable. Everyone gets a plate of spaghetti.
Because love is also patience and being with. I can’t deny that while I’ve held these beliefs about sharing and justice my entire life, my specific thoughts about love as a politics have deepened and come into focus since becoming a mother. I feel like I can see a vulnerable child in every person, beginning with myself, but—and this is the key, not ending there. A parenting book I’ve dipped into over the past few years includes this sentence, “every heart is still seeking the love it was born to know.” I bet there’s some truth in there for you, as there is for me. So much of the terribleness on this earth comes from this unmet need. I’ve mentioned my interest in nonviolent communication here a few times. One of its tenets is that all behaviour is the expression of a need. That doesn’t mean, of course, that all behaviour is acceptable, but it points us to another way of trying to understand actions.
It’s long been unfashionable, cheesy, and naive to talk about hope in political terms. It seems so wishy-washy and empty of meaning. I hope this finds you well. But when attached to love, hope becomes a practice of educating ourselves and others. I said I wouldn’t quote, so let me loosely paraphrase bell hooks, who argues that once we choose love (which is the most difficult step to take), we gain the strength to face pain. And this leads to facing it in community. I see this almost daily in the relief on my children’s faces when I say, “come on, I’ll help. It’s easier if we do it together.”
Sara, this is one of the best things I’ve read in a while. Approachable, above all. Your fitting mention of bell hooks reminded me that I found her writing during my Master’s program at a time when I felt just such a lack (of nurturance, feeling cared for, heard AND listened to…). Thank you for this 🙏
Love this post! Thank you for sharing your wisdom and beautiful writing Sara!